Storyline: It takes 9 months to get back to playing sports and that’s exactly the amount of time it took to recover from tearing my ACL. Written by Peyton Edwards. Missouri
Jump. Land. Twist. Scream. Cry. Those are the five easy steps to tearing your ACL … and you’ll be done for the year.
Here’s my sad, sappy story about how I tore my ACL.
Courtesy: Travel Lane County
It was over the summer two weeks before volleyball tryouts. We were at a spike out (a volleyball tournament just for fun before tryouts).
It was a three-day tournament. The first day we won all of our games. The second day the first game was very early (8:00 a.m.) and we barely won (two points). Our next game was at 10:00 a.m. against a team we knew would be the toughest competition of the day.
In the first set–and tied 15-15–my setter sets the ball to me. I jumped and hit the play over the net. As I landed, my knee twisted to the left and then back into place. I fell straight to the ground screaming, “I’M NOT OK!” I’m rolling on the ground as my team is yelling at me to get up. But I can’t move. It hurts so bad!
Finally, my coach came running out on the court to help. So did my mom and a football coach from our school. I’m still screaming as they straighten out my leg. After I calm down, they helped me up and then carried me to a chair. The football coach told me that he thought I had hyperextended my knee, and that I’d be back playing in two weeks.
But it was something more.
Courtesy: Pontiac General Hospital
After the first set I was still in so much pain that I couldn’t walk. So my mom got the car and two men carried me out of the gym. We went straight to Urgent Care. My mom called my dad to tell him what was going on so he could meet us there.
When we got to Urgent Care my dad was waiting with a wheelchair. The nurse asked me to evaluate my pain on a scale from 1-10. I told her “8,” which is high, so she left to get pain medicine. When she can back, she said that I needed to get an X-Ray.
After the X-Ray results came in, the doctor told me that nothing was broken, but that I needed to go to a knee specialist to see if anything was torn.
When I saw the knee specialist the very next day he told me that he was 98% sure I had torn my ACL. To make sure he ordered a MRI.
Courtesy: Physio Works
That’s what it was: I had torn my ACL and some cartilage and needed surgery if I ever want to ever play volleyball again.
Surgery day was the scariest day of my life. I got through it OK and I started physical therapy the next day. I’m still in therapy.
It takes 9 months to get back to playing sports, and that’s exactly the amount of time it took to recover from tearing my ACL I’m going to tryouts again next year and will also be doing spike outs over the summer.
Hopefully, I won’t be taking those five easy steps again.
